Friday, March 21, 2008

NCLB and the Dropout Crisis

Approximately 1 million American high school students should graduate each year. No one can be certain of the actual numbers - of graduates or dropouts - because no one is tracking that data. No reporting nationally, by state, district, gender, or ethnic group. For good reason! It's embarrassing - to the school, to the school district, to the state, and to the NCLB (No Child Left Behind) Administration. Current estimates put the national graduation rate at best, at 70%. That's a conservative dropout rate of 30%. That's appalling! That's more than 300,000 students who enter adult life having failed the right-of-passage in our society.

The dropout rate is much higher in some states, localities, and ethnic groups than others. Where is that you ask? Poor is the operative term. Poor in material resources, poor in environmental resources, poor in health care, poor in SES (Socio-economic Status), poor in spirit. All the NCLB emphasis on high-stakes, test score accountability totally ignores this dropout crisis. The best analogy compares NCLB to the mile race. Test them rigorously every tenth of a mile - but pay no attention to who crosses the finish line.

Worse yet, NCLB is a major contributor to the dropout crisis. Poor performing students are hardly encouraged to stay in school under the high-stakes, consequence-laden NCLB testing regime - particularly when there are no NCLB graduation standards! Schools would rather lose those students than have their school fail to make AYP (Annual Yearly Progress). As for those students themselves, which students are going to come back year after year to be tested one more time and be told, one more time, they failed?

Tracking this crisis is the first step. Set graduation standards and require AYP. However, it's not as simple as one would think. As I explained in Plaintiff Blues, education data and statistics are not equal, district to district, state to state. As one example, if there are 100 students in a senior class and 96 graduate, that's a 96% graduation rate, right? What if that same senior class had 120 students back in 9th grade? Where did those other 24 students go?

There has to be an established reporting protocol and mandated reporting of graduation and dropout rates before we'll get a handle on the magnitude of this crisis - and find out who is really being left behind!

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